Nephew accuses archbishop

GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

January 9, 2018

By Mindy Aguon

For the last 27 years, Mark Mafnas Apuron has held onto a secret, one that resulted in him being estranged from his immediate family members and left him ashamed and petrified.

“When my experience happened, I thought I was the only one,” Apuron said, as he sat in an office in Hagåtña yesterday, speaking with The Guam Daily Post.

But Apuron resolved to make this year different by coming forward and speaking of the past.

The 43-year-old will be filing a lawsuit this week alleging that he was sexually abused in the chancery in 1990 by his uncle, now-suspended Archbishop Anthony Apuron.

Mark Apuron was then 16 years old and had returned to Guam with his family after his dad retired from the military. He recalls going to his “Uncle Tony’s house” – the Archdiocese of Agana Chancery Office – frequently for various functions.

Anthony Apuron was installed as the archbishop of Agana on May 11, 1986, according to the Archdiocese of Agana. He was also elected president of the Catholic Episcopal Conference of the Pacific in 1990.

During social functions at the chancery, Mark Apuron remembers making alcoholic beverages for his family members at their request, and would occasionally take a sip.

On one occasion in 1990, Mark Apuron sneaked away from the crowd to smoke a cigarette in his uncle’s bathroom inside the chancery. While inside, sipping an alcohol mixed drink and puffing on a cigarette, the 16-year-old became distracted testing out the bottles of cologne displayed on his uncle’s bathroom vanity.

“I just wanted to enjoy myself and do it in private, where nobody could see me,” Mark Apuron said, explaining that he was a teen experimenting. “I just wanted to try it.”

The next thing he knew, his uncle, Archbishop Anthony Apuron, was staring at him angrily.

“He asked, ‘What are you doing?'” Mark Apuron said. He said he froze, afraid of what trouble he was in, when his uncle allegedly pulled down his pants and pushed him onto the vanity. The teen thought he was going to get a whipping for smoking and drinking but instead, he said, his uncle raped him. He managed to shove the older relative off and get away, and stayed with his parents until they were ready to leave.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.